Chapter 527: Breakthrough and upgrade?

One by one, the flasks filled with the miraculous liquid were emptied over Eve's resting place. As the fluid slowly trickled from the bottle on top of her skin, it seemed as if with every drop her complexity was improving by a tiny, little bit.

Even though I felt the urge to just unload all the bottled on her body to speed up the process, I knew that doing so would be highly unwise. While there was a small chance that it wouldn't make any difference, I preferred to be as careful as possible.

After all, cultivating one's soul wasn't as easy as it was to improve one's body! And even with that bodily training, most cultivators would still require an insane amount of time to proceed through every step.

Yet as contrary to the usual situation, I was feeding Eve's body the nutrients necessary for it to nourish the soul, while not giving her flesh any chance to use it for itself. That was one thing that I made sure in advance to proceed with the treatment. It would be tragic if her body suddenly started to improve, basing its growth of her current, mortally wounded state!

Tic, tic, tic.

The droplets of this thick, strikingly blue liquid continued to drop on Eve's naked skin. Whenever one vial would turn completely empty, I would thrice inspect it to check whether even a tiniest little droplet managed to somehow hide within the confines of this strange, energy-consuming glass.

Yet no matter how slow this process was in my eyes, the number of full bottles stacked neatly in a row continued to decrease, while the pile of worthless leftover bottles continued to grow.

As more of this strange medicine was absorbed by Eve's body, her complexity slowly started to change. Despite the fact that her body was completely frozen in this see-through capsule, I could swear that the expression of relaxation mixed with pain that she held when I laid her down in this place back in the days, was slowly cleansing itself from the part that made my heart cry with blood whenever I saw it.

Soon enough, the last bottle finally dropped on top of the small pile, ending the first part of the process. Yet despite the initial stage of the treatment ending, I could see how Eve's aura continued to rise in power.

At first, it was hard to see even a hint of her soul energy, yet as time went on, I could see her aura overcoming the same steps that any other cultivator would spend years to tackle.

From the moment when my energy vision finally allowed me to see the small shine of her aura, it took only a short moment before it suddenly burst in brightness, nearly blinding me for a moment, only to suddenly darken out as what was nothing more than a mist, condensed into a thick presence.

Yet rather than stopping there, the moment it reached something akin to a breaking point after which, if it continued condensing, it would surely become tangible, Eve's aura suddenly exploded!

Instantly expanding to nearly two meters, three meters, five meters away from her body, it didn't show any signs of stopping! Only after expanding as far as the walls of the room went, it suddenly ground to a halt. Yet this unexpected change of momentum was rather unnatural!

Focusing my entire mind at scanning the surroundings, I realised that I failed to predict one thing. As there was an entire underdimension lodged in the ground floor of the tower, the walls that separated the inner underground rooms from the dry earth of the outside were actually reinforced with energy so thick, that even I would have serious trouble while attempting to break it!

While there was no more space to expand, Eve's aura continued to grow, forcefully thickening once again. Seeing this, I couldn't help but feel great distress. With my current perception statistic, I could say to be slightly above the establishing dominion level. Whenever I would use my senses to their utmost limits, just like I did back when fighting with that crafty sect master of the gorilla sect, everything in the span of nearly half a kilometre would be well within my sphere of perception! In that area, even a leaf falling from the tree couldn't escape my senses!

Yet while seeing how Eve's aura struggled to expand further, I had no means to fix the current situation. In fact, when I thought about it if I could sacrifice the reach of her perception for the sake of her smooth breakthroughs, I would pay that price many times over!

And just when I thought about it, I realised that after this short period of forced condensation, the movement of her aura changed once again. Either because she managed to force her way through the bottleneck of this small level, or because she had no other choice, Eve aura's expansion turned inwards. While it was something different than the previous instance where it simply grew in thickness, I could feel as if the mist that filled the entire room was far more… wholesome?

It was as if even the smallest bit of this aura was filled with Eve's soul to its brim, indicating that she already reached the level of expanding senses!

Yet even before I could enjoy the realisation that she could most likely sense my presence already, her aura started thickening once again!

This time, it seemed as if the source of the energy that drove all Eve's breakthrough to this point, finally dried up, while supplying her without enough momentum to attempt tackling yet another hurdle on her road to growth!

But with the loss of the external energy, rather than thickening on itself, Eve's aura started reining back on itself, proving that it could condense further only by decreasing its overall volume.

Watching over the process, I had mixed feelings. At one hand, I couldn't be happier about the fact that Eve's soul was growing stronger and stronger, indicating that the prospect of fully saving her from her current situation was more than just a slight hope. Yet at the same time, the fact that she managed to overcome multiple bottlenecks at once was quite worrying in terms of whether it wouldn't affect her future growth!

But once again, I wasn't given any time to focus on my internal struggle, as the rate at which Eve's aura was pulling back towards her body rather than slowing down, was constantly accelerating!

By the time it condensed all the way back to only three meters away from her skin, I could clearly see that it long reached the level of proper dominion, yet rather than stopping there, it continued to collapse back on her!

With a bad premonition born in my mind, I cast a quick look at the string of messages that I never bothered to check out before. One by one, the notifications about the enemies that I slew, achievements that I reached and most importantly, experience points that I received… They all covered my entire view in a mere moment!

Realising the implication of those messages, I swiped my hand to the side, instantly discarding all of the notifications to take a look at the main status window of my system.

"Level 100. Please upgrade the system to progress further!"